IBM

Bought an Intellistation POWER 275
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So I bought a 9114-275. I just searched on a whim, and once I found
http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=220387082451
, I couldn't stop refreshing the page.
Dual 1.45GHz POWER4+, 4GB RAM, GXT6500P, DVD-ROM and floppy drive, replete with plastic door, 1Gbit Ethernet and dual channel U320 SCSI PCI-X cards. For 200 Euros. I saw beige RS/6000s go for this amount a couple months before. I even saw a dual Opteron 2.2GHz with a Quadro FX 1000 go for 130EURs... but for obvious reasons, I didn't go for that one. Glancing at the POWER4 and Opteron SPECint results on realworldtech, though, it seems I should have chosen the latter. Oh well, it's only integer.

The only thing is, it doesn't have a hard drive. What am I getting myself into? I can just see myself losing hair over where to find a drive tray and trying to figure out DASD and where to get the hard drive without further breaking my bank.

The only thing is, it doesn't have a hard drive. What am I getting myself into? I can just see myself losing hair over where to find a drive tray and trying to figure out DASD and where to get the hard drive without further breaking my bank.

Get all the documentation you can from IBM on your machine. Get a copy of AIX 5.3, you'll need it. Also talk to nekochan member PymbleSoftware, he's been exploring the machine for sometime now.

My 7028-6C1 came without disks so I had to acquire some caddies first before I could install a couple of IBM 80 pin SCSI disks.

Well damn. My student account just hit its monthly withdrawal limit, and all because of this damn computer. No money=No freedom.

In any case, OpenFirmware is a bitch. It scrolls so slowly, you might wanna go get a coffee while you type dev / and ls. Damn thing boots real slowly, too, and the only way to disable those pesky power on diagnostics is to use a serial cable to connect to the Service Processor.

Not to mention that it has the gall to display the CPU clock in hex. Thanks. Really.

On the bright side, it's not that noisy. I could definitely sleep with this on, unlike the Octane, which requires me to be really tired before I can sleep. The tons of foam padding on the front door and the rear metal cover help. And the LCD on the front is a cool touch.

FRU 00N7281
Is this the drive tray/carrier for the 9114/275 (EDIT: no it isn't)? This info is surprisingly obscure. If only it used regular SCA connectors - so far all I've been able to find are hard drives for over 200EURs with the trays which have golden fingers instead of the normal SCA.

The first 9114-275 I received had the front plastic thing (really is flimsy, as Pymble said) in what looked like a Ravensburger puzzle. For the record, I never managed to figure out the one Ravensburger puzzle my relatives bought for me when I was around 10. Not to mention the rare Samtec cable that linked the Operator Panel to the media bay was torn. How? Don't ask me
And because it's so damn heavy, IBM was nice enough to provide plastic rollers - on one end of the case, so you have to drag it along like luggage while bending uncomfortably.

So I complained with a scathing email ("Did the packaging materials cost less than 5EURs?") and the next day a replacement was shipped. They were even so nice as to tell me to keep the components from the 275 I already had. Which means I now have two GXT6500Ps and two redundant Artesys 500W PSUs and a ton of hard drive bay filler panels in the pictured system. The memory was already maxed out at 8x512MB DIMMs, so the extra RAM didn't help, unfortunately. RAM seems to be pretty expensive for the 275.

The muffler is a really nice touch. Without it, the 275 looks about as long as... say, a Cooler Master Cosmos S. And very loud, especially with two PSUs. With the muffler on, it is indisputably the longest computer I've ever laid eyes on, and one of the quieter ones I've owned. I'm serious, the muffler is incredible. It gets a bit warm back there, but there's enough space for the cables, the foam probably catches all the dust or something, and it's very quiet. Pop off the side panel while the system's running and you'll see just how loud those three fans are. It's incredible they managed to make it quiet.

Being quiet is also important because the PSU fan runs all the time, even when it's not powered on. As soon as you plug in the power cable, it does some check with 4 digit hex codes on the green backlit Operator Panel, and the fans never turn off. With the muffler on, it's unnoticeable.

It's also a freaking cool system because it's never in a hurry to turn on, just like that cool guy who always saunters around with two chicks at his sides. Guys like that never walk quickly, in case you haven't met one before. This one's the same idea - it takes about 20-30 seconds from the time when you push the power button till when the fans turn on. Then it takes about 5 minutes to do a complete system diagnosis, after which you'll get a few seconds to press a few keys to enter the SMS menu or configure boot options. In order to skip the diagnosis, you'll have to hook up a serial cable to the Service Processor (which, like the PSU, runs all the time) and jiggle around with the settings. Yes, that's the only way to do it.

And once you get into OpenFirmware, everything scrolls real slowly. Don't type ls. You'll be stuck there waiting for minutes while a complete hardware inventory scrolls by, like using framebuffer console on Linux while maxing out your CPU on something else, except 100 times slower.

That's all I know about it now. Overall, I think it was very worth the 200 EURs I spent on it, considering I got more than I asked for and 2x1.45GHz POWER4+ CPUs at that. Then again, 200EURs is still a lot of money for me, and I don't have a permanent residence in Germany. Shipping it back home when I graduate will be a nightmare.

Bad news - I broke one of the plastic tabs that holds the door closed. And on top of that, I unplugged it. The 2 PSUs that run 24x7 were getting on my nerves when I was trying to sleep. I currently don't foresee myself powering it back on anytime soon - browsing the net without any slowdown on a RISC machine is cool and all that, but... it doesn't feel special (KDE), and if I hook up my Syncmaster 950p to the IBM using the DVI-VGA converter, I get visible convergence artifacts which never appeared in a direct 13W3-VGA connection from the Octane to the 950p. I guess I'll have to get a used Flexscan L685 next month so I can finally use it on a big enough screen and without artifacts.

For now, I'm back on my Octane. Next time I use the IBM, I'll probably log into CDE instead. Damn, I can't believe I'm doing this after I spent 200 on it...